"Who is This 'We' That Has Yet to Sing in Our Already Too Familiar land? A Response to Larry Grossberg"
Guest Writer: Robert Mejia

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

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A frame from Erykah Badu's video "Window Seat" (2010) 

 [On Friday March 2, Lawrence Grossberg spoke at a CAS MillerComm lecture hosted by the Institute for Communications Research. In the following post guest blogger Rober Mejia describe Grossberg's lecture while also discussing the keynote lecture at the March 2-3 Institute of Communications Research 2012 Alumni & Friends Reunion Conference]


"Who is This 'We' That Has Yet to Sing in Our Already Too Familiar Land? A Response to Larry Grossberg" 





Written by Robert Mejia (Institute of Communications Research) 

The affective investment Larry Grossberg has had in the path of Cultural Studies should not go unrecognized. As the only U.S. student to have studied at both the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (under Stuart Hall) and the Institute of Communications Research (under James Carey), Grossberg took direct part in an intellectual exchange that was just beginning to occur in the late-1960s. His name is associated with several of the most significant publications and conferences in the history of cultural studies, including Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (1988 [conference in 1983]) and Cultural Studies (1991 [conference in 1990]), and he has continued to operate as a significant intellectual force through his long tenure as editor of Cultural Studies (1990-Present) and, most recently, through his publication of Cultural Studies in the Future Tense (2010). 

It goes without saying that the field of contemporary cultural studies is indebted to the early and ongoing work of Larry Grossberg. And yet, though I am fond of much of what Grossberg writes, including the selections we read from his recent book, I cannot help but wonder who the “we” is in the “how can we sing—in a strange land?” And for whom is this land strange? 

Interestingly enough, Aisha Durham gave a related lecture on the following day called,“Black to the Future: Old School Lessons for a New Hip Hop Generation.” Like Grossberg, Durham questioned the possibility for alternative politics in our contemporary moment. In her case the question was less “how can we sing?” than why do so many fail to hear those who have already begun singing? Rephrasing the question as such allows us to complicate the main suggestions touched on during Grossberg’s lecture: 
  • We should develop rigorous and theoretically consistent models. 
  • We should find means for contemporary counter-culture to enter the popular. 
  • We are not yet pessimistic enough to undertake the work necessary for grasping the complexity of our contemporary political moment. 







A second frame from Erykah Badu's "Window Seat" (2010)
Theoretical Consistency

Grossberg characterized the work of much of contemporary critical theory as “opportunistic” in substituting the theorist’s own politics for methodological rigor. His claim is that cultural studies (or more generally the academic leftwing) has criticized dominant knowledge paradigms such as science only to uphold the authority of those same paradigms whenever it became politically expedient to do so. This methodological inconsistency, he believes, has played into the hands of conservative politics, while the postmodern destabilization of the “real” has made it difficult to act in the name of ethical political action. Although Grossberg’s concern is relevant, I am uncertain if “we” have all had equal ability or desire to operate so opportunistically. 

I am reminded of Barbara Christian’s The Race for Theorywhich expresses concern that the very moment at which “the literature of blacks, women of South America and Africa, etc.” were beginning to receive significant national and international attention is when this “overtly ‘political’ literature was being preempted by a new Western concept proclaiming that reality does not exist.” Is Christian part of the “we” referred to in Grossberg’s talk? The problem with such uncritical use of the pronoun is that it often means some combination of White, Male, Western, Middle-to-Upper-Class, able-bodied, Academic Professional, etc. 

Entering the Popular 

Asking about whom the “we” stands for in the talk’s title matters in terms of Grossberg’s suggestion that contemporary counter-culture is in need of a means through which to politically engage the popular. The insinuation of this claim, however, betrays the combination of the “we” that he imagines as constituting the popular; for, as Durham suggested in her talk, many populations have not stopped singing. Rock-and-roll was influenced by African American artists from the south, such as Muddy Waters. Hence, it could be argued that what “we” conceive of as counter-culture was at least a partial cooptation of radical politics by much less radical (and, in many cases, overtly commercial) interests. In general, I agree with Grossberg’s contention regarding the limits of an all-or-nothing conception of politics; however, I still believe that it is worth noting that it seems as though “counter-culture” is often recognized as existing only when white populations participate.


Matt and Kim in "Lessons Learned" (2009)
This assumption, too, illuminates the significance of Durham’s lecture, for her analysis of the reception of Erykah Badu’s “Window Seat” illustrates that the question is not so much “how can we sing” but, rather, why can this “we” not yet hear those who have already begun to sing? For those unfamiliar with “Window Seat,” the music video features Badu walking through the streets of Dallas, singing lyrics such as “I need you to want me / need you to miss me / I need your attention” as she slowly disrobes. Durham explains that Badu’s music video was inspired by Matt and Kim’s music video for “Lessons Learned.” Whereas Matt and Kim’s nudity in “Lessons Learned” was meant to convey an idea of “just not giving a fuck anymore” and resulted in an apology from the police officers on scene who attempted to break up the filming, Badu was cited for disorderly conduct and her actions generated a significant amount of controversy. As Durham suggests, the question of singing is not so much a matter of production as it is one of the policing of consumption—that is the “we” who refuse to see those who have already begun to sing. 

Optimism of the Will, Pessimism of the Intellect 

I will conclude this response to Larry Grossberg’s presentation with a discussion of pessimism. As his lecture came to an end, Paula Treichler asked how “we” can find the political courage to act in a moment so overwhelmed with pessimism about the possibility of any significant effect (in the face of events such as Citizens United). Grossberg’s response was that “we” are not yet pessimistic enough—and here, I would agree. To the extent that the “we” formulated by Grossberg refers to those in possession of some semblance of privilege—whether real or imagined—I do not think that many of those of his intended audience yet carry the sense of desperation needed to undertake the scholarly work necessary to contribute to a larger—i.e., beyond tenure—problem. This is not to propose a false binary between academic work and political or any other kind of work; rather, I suggest that too often, graduate students and faculty are taught to think in terms of interesting questions as opposed to necessary questions. Although interesting questions have a place in the academy, and are not always separate from those of necessary questions, the stance taken matters. 

In other words, what is at stake if one is lazy when engaging with an intellectual question—what is at stake? Tenure? No. For we all know that a wrong published answer is worth more than the correct, but unpublished, answer when the question is one of tenure. But when the questions are those of how cuts to Women, Infants and Children (WIC) funding will affect your sister and nephew, or how the economic recovery is affecting your father, and how much you can afford to help support them on a graduate student’s salary, then you had better be damn right when answering your questions—because in moments such as these, one does not have the luxury of getting it wrong and still being right; one must live with the consequences. 


Until “we,” whomever they may be, understand this—understand that some questions are more than just questions, but rather a matter of life—then “we” will continue to produce interesting questions for the tenured (or not) faculty to ponder, but “we” will fail to ask the questions and produce the answers that are needed at this particular moment.

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Dr. Aisha Durham and Amanda Murphyao for their feedback and support in the writing of this response.
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Eitan Bar-Yosef,"From Zionist Utopia to Imperial Metropolis:
Geographies of Ideology", Guest Writer: Zia Miric

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

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A kosher provisions shop at 183 Brick Lane in East London (1910)
[On February 20, 2012, the Unit for Criticism co-organized a workshop with the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, “New Cities for New Jews: Zionist Utopia, Fantasy and the Modern Ur Landscape,” led by Eitan Bar-Yosef (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev). The below contribution is from Zia Miric.]

"From Zionist Utopia to Imperial Metropolis: Geographies of Ideology"

Written by Zia Miric (English)

“I say to you, therefore, that you must hold fast to the things that have made us great: to liberality, tolerance, love of mankind. Only then is Zion truly Zion!” With these words, Mr. Steineck, the architect of the “Prosperous Land” for the New Society in Palestine, closed his improvised electoral speech in the unruly moshav of Neudorf. While this fictional character (based on the Viennese architect Oskar Marmorek) could not win the election without reinforcement from “one of the people,” David Littwak (modelled on David Wolffsohn, Herzl’s successor as President of the World Zionist Organization), he did express the ethos of the cosmopolitan nation-state from Theodor Herzl’s dream. By mediation of Anglo-German science and technology, modern liberal culture was transplanted into Mediterranean geography, yielding an exemplary progressive and open society.

It is in the context of this kind of fin-de-siècle European culture that Eitan Bar-Yosef probes the Zionist urban imaginary in Theodor Herzl’s Old-New Land (1902) and Violet Guttenberg’s A Modern Exodus (1904). In conversation with Max Nordau’s critique of a supposedly degenerative modern culture, Herzl devised the New Society as the recipe for rebuilding the Jewish body and character and as a blueprint for the "New Jew’s" urban environment. Bar-Yosef focuses critical insight on Haifa figured as a dazzlingly successful model city in Herzl’s Zionist utopia, whereas in Guttenberg’s narrative it dismally fails to “correct” the Jewish character. Bar-Yosef posits the intriguing link between Zionism and the city in the utopian genre’s modelling of Bildung understood as the improvement of the Jewish body and mind.

 As Bar-Yosef’s research shows, the idea of the Jewish city, grounded in geography, genealogy and ideology, was articulated in the divergent but curiously congruent projects of Herzl’s Haifa and Guttenberg’s anti-Zionist dystopia. In Old-New Land, the cosmopolitan city reforms Jewish character because it is the perfect habitation for a “New Jew” who is stripped of Jewish traits. Bar-Yosef emphasizes two striking features of Herzlian urban fantasy: first, the prominence of department stores (to remove the threat of the vulgar peddler); and second, the absence of apartment buildings and coffee houses (to secure neat separation between public and private realms). That the urban landscape of Herzl’s futuristic city facilitates orderly, policed suppression of “undesirable” Jewish characteristics demonstrates one of Bar-Yosef’s key points. Herzl had so deeply internalized anti-semitic stereotypes that his idea of a Zionist utopia was city designed to eradicate the Jewish lifestyles of Diaspora communities.

Whereas Herzl’s urban utopia resembles other late-Victorian and Edwardian projects, Violet Guttenberg’s narrative grows out of a body of sensational, melodramatic novels penned in the 1890s and 1900s that obsessively reimagined George Eliot’s Zionist plot, though more in the spirit of what Daniel Deronda’s creator disparaged as “silly lady novelists.” Notwithstanding the coincidence of both authors choosing to portray Haifa as the epitome of the modern Zionist city, the two works are strikingly dissimilar. Guttenberg’s dystopia responds to British developments such as the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration in 1902, which led to the Aliens Act in 1905, restricting the immigration and naturalization of “pauper aliens,” namely the masses of impoverished Eastern European Jews fleeing from pogroms and revolutionary disorder.

In Guttenberg’s Zionist universe, the messy urban space reflects the messy “Jewish” character, with the blurring of private and public spheres, and embarrassing religious and ethno-nationalist bigotry. Accordingly, Bar-Yosef points out that while Herzl and Guttenberg offer comparable constructions of “Jewish” character, only Herzl imagines a utopian city that can “correct” it. This difference is emblematized in the contrast between Herzl’s depiction of Littwak’s picturesque mansion Friedrichsheim and Guttenberg’s rendering of Montella’s semi-finished house, with its Christian mistress banished because of supposed Jewish intolerance. Guttenberg eventually converted to Christianity and though little is known about her she was the author of many conversionist fictions. Still, Bar-Yosef underlines, it was Guttenberg who got right the complex reality of the “Jewish” city, including hostile attitudes toward various Others. Likewise, the messiness that Herzl aimed to downplay erupts with a vengeance in Guttenberg’s Haifa: lack of regulation and coherence in urban landscape combines with greedy and petty tendencies to result in carnivalesque excess.

Bar-Yosef’s comparison of these two utopian fictions led me to want to explore what kind of social contract Herzl and Guttenberg imagined for citizens who successfully assimilate to Western standards whether it be in Palestine’s new society, or in revitalized Britain. This question loomed large in the lively discussion by the participants in the workshop who raised the possibility that Guttenberg’s novel actually advocates a place for Jews in the West (with key characters in her novel returning to London after their failed Zionist journey). In the largest sense both of these novels seem to be contemplating the question of Jews’ place in modernity, whether as assimilated citizens in modern nations like Britain, or as de-Judaized citizens of their own modern nation-state.

Near the end of Bar-Yosef’s paper, he shows how both Guttenberg and Herzl adopt the fashionable discourse of “desirable dosage” of Jewishness in modern Europe, as featured famously in George Du Maurier’s Trilby. One thread of discussion pondered the internal (Anglo-Saxon) racial question of blood, as it featured in the writings of prominent Victorians such as Benjamin Disraeli, Matthew Arnold, and George Eliot, leading all the way to Violet Guttenberg. British politicians and intellectuals were concerned with the nature of England’s racial composition and the aristocracy’s leadership capacity, variously drawing on Jewish/Semitic/”aristocratic” Sephardic mystique for revitalization. Combining race science and eugenic discourses with geographic and cultural determinism, late-Victorian and early-Edwardian writers were ready to authorize hygienic interventions and municipal reforms in order to shape modern cities that would counter degeneration. One possible intertext for Herzl, it was suggested, would be H.G. Wells’ A Modern Utopia (1905), which explores volunteerism and freedom in a planned society, establishing intriguing parallels with Old-New Land’s utopian project of urban redesign of the Jewish body.


Carmel and Haifa taken by the American Colony (Jerusalem) Photo Dept. in the 1920s.
Haifa in the Old-New Land is an international Mediterranean city, imprinted by Western technology, culture, and politics. And yet, when the lawyer Dr. Walter undertakes to explain “the effects of the Jewish mass migration upon the Jews who had remained in Europe,”(pg. 178) he enthusiastically emphasizes that “the less Jewish abilities were offered in the marketplace, the more their value was appreciated. The value of services always increased with their scarcity”—recalling the discourse of a “desirable dosage” of Jewishness which is neither too much nor too little. Guttenberg’s narrative dénouement reaffirms this conclusion: London, as the true city of the future, is revived upon the return of acculturated British Jews who were earlier expelled. Only the shtetl rabble remain back in Palestine, where they are unlikely to transform Haifa into a utopia. Hence, in Guttenberg’s utopian London, there is no place for Yosef Haim Brenner’s multitudes calling out of the depths of distress.
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The Ends of History, "History Without Ends"
Guest Writer: Ezra Claverie

Friday, February 17, 2012

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[On February 10, 2012, the Unit for Criticism partnered with the Trowbridge Office on American Literature, Culture, & Society for a symposium, The Ends of History. The below contribution is from Ezra Claverie. It is the second of two in a series of grad student posts published on the event.]

“History Without Ends”

Written by Ezra Claverie (English)

I have forgiven myself for assuming that the 10 February symposium, The Ends of History, would deal with what Giorgio Agamben calls “the Hegelo-Kojèvian idea of an end of history.” A look at some of the Unit’s suggested background readings showed me my error, though it might be fairer to say that it made me realize that the wordplay of the symposium’s title had offered me two readings of the noun end, and I had taken the wrong one. These are not “ends” in the sense of completion, where a process ceases (in, say, a utopia or, perhaps, a sustainable liberal commonwealth); these are “ends” as opposed to means, the ends of “doing” history—as in methodological historicism. If historicism is the use of history as “theory” in Jonathan Culler’s sense—that is, the techniques and assumptions of one discipline brought usefully to bear in another—then the question that the participants in this symposium all seemed to ask was, what kind of historicism should literary scholars do, and why?

One answer is that they should do “surface reading” which could be conceived as a shallower kind of historicism. In articles available on the Unit for Criticism’s webpage, two speakers at the symposium, Stephen Best and Heather Love (along with Best's co-author Sharon Marcus) argue from comparable perspectives that the dominance of the “hermeneutics of suspicion” has inflated critics’ self-importance leading scholars to fancy themselves as prophets who reveal the meanings encrypted in texts, while simultaneously blinding these very same scholars to meanings hiding in plain sight on the text’s surface. A more polemical variation on this argument is found in Rita Felski’s essay. But, as Rachel Buurma noted in her lecture, the only speaker to advocate against historicism explicitly is Walter Benn Michaels.

Unsurprisingly, then, a recurring topic at the symposium concerned the distinction between a detached and “antiquarian” historicism (to use the adjective Michaels introduced into the discussion of Best’s paper on Toni Morrison’s A Mercy), and an ethically and politically committed brand of historicism—which might possibly but not necessarily take its cue from an identitarian politics such as the aim to recover the stories of marginalized or silenced populations. For Americanists this might center on the lost or diminished voices of slaves in the Americas though, from a different point of view, historian Andrew Sartori (whose paper was read at the conference by Zack Sell in History) pointed to African responses to the imposition of capitalist structures in the imperial era. In discussion and in his paper, Michaels argued that understanding the past is neither sufficient for nor even necessary to changing the present. In particular, understanding the historical origins of the high levels of economic inequality in the United States is well and good, he argued; but it does not tell us what to do next, and it does not do that work for us. Most of all, Michaels argued, identitarian focus on race and the history of slavery loses sight of the fact that inequality is increasingly a question of class rather than race. Neither the presenters nor the audience seemed satisfied with Michaels’s more polemical claims—including Best, whose published arguments in favor of “surface reading” did not appear to tally with Michaels’s position against the history of race in particular and the use of historicism more generally. Nonetheless, those claims did lead to the most energetic discussions of the day.

The claim that racial history is antiquarian may seem simply false to some, but Lauren Goodlad offered a useful way of getting past the debate when she suggested that even an antiquarian historicism could be pedagogically important. Our undergraduates, she pointed out, do not necessarily understand that the world in which they live is significantly different from the world of thirty years ago (or 130 years ago): that is, they often don’t understand that the common sense of any given period has, historically, changed over time, with so-called conventional wisdom often (as it is now) in contest. “Mere” antiquarian history, which strives to reconstruct past events and structures of feeling, enables students to formulate their own political opinions—once they are able to realize that the status quo is not (and has never been) either natural or eternal.

My own experience as a teacher of film bears out the significance of these questions. Many times I have interrupted students whose urge to analyze “deep” phenomena blinds them to the obvious:

CINEMA TEACHER: So what do these [camera] framings of the gunfighters do here?

 STUDENT: Well, the outlaw is like, a wanderer between the city and the wilderness, which is why he’s wearing a hat—hats are a product of civilization—even though we can still see the mountains behind him. And he’s from Red River, which is probably something about communism and the Russians—

 CINEMA TEACHER: Yeah, but in the reverse shot, you can see the mountains behind the sheriff, too, and the mountains are out of focus in both shots. And the sheriff is also wearing a hat. But over the sheriff’s shoulder you can see the stagecoach waiting, and it’s in focus. Let’s just talk about what we see and hear during these two shots—then let’s talk function, then let’s talk motivation.

So, yes, “surface reading” makes sense: for students as well as teachers in the humanities.

Yet, I would add that arguments about motivation, why a certain technique appears in an artwork, can and should use historicist methods, especially in the classroom. In the above story, is the camera technique salient without knowing that two years earlier, the same production company made a successful (but now largely forgotten) spy film using the same personnel and equipment? Does the western’s supposedly distinctive mountain landscape enter plain sight because the producers shot the film in a location where the costs of labor were low (say, the right-to-work state of North Carolina), or in a country without any movie industry (say, the Canary Islands)—far from the usual locations where Hollywood and Cinecittà shoot their horse operas?

Thus, even non-suspicious research into the histories of production and reception can give our students wider bases on which to interpret texts, whether those interpretations lean toward formalism, “symptomatic” reading, or some blend of the two. Love’s call for “descriptive reading” that is close but not deep may require the descriptive inputs of “antiquarian” history–even as students are enabled to understand (pace Goodlad’s point) that the conditions of textual production and reception are not and have never been eternal.

My hypothetical student’s impulse to find latent or hidden political meanings is not blameworthy, but students imitate their teachers whether or not they have mastered the hermeneutic techniques that their teachers use with such apparent ease. We might do well to rein in our desire to map the submerged part of the iceberg for our undergraduates, until we have carefully mapped the part that anyone can see, and maybe we should convince them that our surface mappings are thorough and accurate before we send them into the depths. Read more

Letter from the Director, Spring 2012

Monday, January 23, 2012

posted under , , by Unit for Criticism
Dear Colleagues,

As my previous mails may have already suggested, there is much good news afoot for the Unit for Criticism! Last week we launched our new Criticism & Interpretive Theory fellowship program (deadline 3/2); and our events for this semester include a February 10 winter symposium, The Ends of History, organized with the Trowbridge Office on American Literature, Culture, & Society; as well as a faculty/grad seminar, co-organized with IPRH and faculty in Art History and Sociology (about to begin on Thursday, January 26). The seminar will meet 5 times over the course of the semester for conversations in anticipation of BEYOND UTOPIA? Art, Theory, & the Coming of “Spring,” an April 26-27 conference on aesthetics, politics, and new revolutionary movements, featuring keynote lectures from Bonnie Honig (Northwestern), Saba Mahmood (Berkeley), and Eyal Weizman (Goldsmiths). On behalf of myself, Nicholson Associate Director J. B. Capino and the Unit’s research assistants, Mike Black & mc Anderson, I welcome you to take part in these events as well as to follow some of our doings on Kritik, the Unit’s weblog. I also want to mention that Mad World: Sex, Politics, Style & the 1960s, co-edited by Lilya Kaganovsky, Robert A. Rushing, and me, a project that began with a February 2010 winter symposium, is now in production with Duke University Press.

The Ends of History explores the interaction of formalism and historicism and includes papers by Srinivas Aravamudan (Duke), Stephen Best (Berkeley), Rachel Buurma (Swarthmore), Manu Goswami (NYU) , Heather Love (Penn), and Walter Benn Michaels (UIC) as well as a closing roundtable with Illinois colleagues in American Indian Studies, English, French, and History. The day before the symposium, on Thursday 2/9 at 3:30pm, Aravamudan will lead a seminar on “The Character of the University”: if you would like to register, there are still a few slots open (simply reply to this mail and we will add you on a first-come/first-serve basis). Later in the month we join the Program in Jewish Culture & Society to host a workshop with Eitan Bar Yosef (Ben Gurion) whose work-in-progress on Zionist fantasy and the modern urban landscape, is part of the semester-long BEYOND UTOPIA? series of events.

On Friday March 2, we partner with the Institute of Communications Research in welcoming Lawrence Grossberg (UNC)—one of the Unit for Criticism’s founding members—for a CAS/MillerComm lecture at the Spurlock Museum Auditorium. On Monday 3/12, Unit affiliate Maggie Flinn (French) speaks on “Banlieutopia” in 1930s cinema with a response from Tamara Chaplin (History). March closes with yet another collaboration: on 3/29 we join the Center for Middle Eastern & South Asian Studies in welcoming Joshua Landis (Oklahoma) for “Syria and the Arab Spring”—a second CAS/MillerComm-sponsored lecture at Spurlock. On April 2, Unit assistants Mike & mc host a grad student conference on “Technology in Theory & Practice”—paper proposals are welcome through 2/17.

In addition to the three keynote lectures, the BEYOND UTOPIA? conference includes papers from Mohammed Bamyeh (Pittsburgh), Romand Coles (Northern Arizona), Angelia Haro (Duke), Noha Radwan (Davis), Jeffrey Skoller (Berkeley), Phillip Wegner (Florida), and Rebecca Zorach (Chicago). The readings for the seminar, most of which are ready for downloading from the Unit’s website, include publications from all of these visiting scholars as well as selections from Fredric Jameson, Jacques Rancière, Mike Davis, Bernard Harcourt, and Slavoj Žižek. The seminar is open to all faculty and students and if you have not already “registered” I welcome you to do so by replying to this email. Along with my wonderful co-organizers, JB, Dianne Harris (IPRH/Architecture), Irene Small (Art History), Zsuzsa Gille (Sociology), and Markus Schulz (Sociology), I look forward to your joining us.

Please write to me, JB, Mike, or mc if you have any questions for us or any suggestions concerning the Unit’s present or future programming. It is always a pleasure to hear from you.

Lauren Read more

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